An Ineffective Tengu

The weekend.  The cat will play.  Let's see what's up in EVEland.

I log in, and I know nothing beyond my home system.  I am zipped up, probably.  Likely.  Almost certain.  But that can be rectified.  I am already in my hunting Manticore.  I'll search down the three new sigs.  One is my static C4.  The others are yet to be determined.

I determine them to be one gas and one radar site.  Hmm.  Well, since I am zipped -- probably -- this might be a good time to earn a bit of ISK.  So I activate the gas (a frontier site), then warp to my home POS and get in my small-site Tengu.  I wait around a while doing other stuff.  Finally I warp in to the site and... nothing is there.  I'll sit.  After five minutes, finally some sleepers appear.  I kill them, and the reinforcements that appear too.  My mobile tractor is grabbing all the wrecks, and my one salvager is grinding them.  All done now.  30m ISK richer, and now it is time to hunt.

I don't want to open my C5 now.  So I'll head into the C4 and see what's there.  I warp to the wormhole, bookmark it, and jump.  Then I bookmark the far side, and attend to the dscan.

Nothing much.  I am near an outer planet, though.  The center system, I can see.  But one of the planets is out of range.  I check the sigs: just three.  That will be my entrance wormhole, a K162, and the two statics of this system.  Also, there are no anoms except for one ore site.  This system looks lived in.

I move away from the wormhole, launching probes.  Then I throw the probes out of the system, cloak and decide what to do.

The ore site is near to the planet I cannot see, so I warp to it instead of the planet.  You never know when you might find miners mining.  As I cross the inner system, I dscan.  Lo and behold: two Retrievers.  I think I have found miners mining! 

I land on grid in the ore site.  Sure enough, about 40km from me are the two Retrievers fairly close together, mining into jetcans it appears.  They've each got a full flight of mining drones out.  The discovery scanner is ticking, so I head straight at them.  I think I can get there faster than bouncing.  It should be only a minute, then I'll have them.

One of them moves.  Did they both move?  Uh oh.  The first one's drones are coming back to it.  I think they saw my sig.  Curse you discovery scanner!

I redirect slightly to head at the second.  If I am lucky, he is AFK or not paying attention to his corp chat, and I can still get him.  But now his drones are returning too.  I am still 30km away.  The first Retriever warps off.

Desperate, I uncloak and hit my microwarp.  My hope is to cross the remaining 22km fast enough to get in range to scramble the remaining miner.  I lock, and open up on him... but the torpedoes never hit.  He warps too.

Dammit.

I cloak, then fly to the nearby planet.  I'll search down the moon they are at, and see what they do next.  There are four tower, including two towers with ships at them, both with bubbles at them.  From the Cyrillic, it appears they are Russians.  I don't like the look of those bubbles, always fearing decloak traps.  So I won't get on grid yet.  I'll just wait a bit to see if they go back to business as usual.  (It's crazy, but sometimes people do.)

Instead I see two Scorpions appear.   Uh oh.  I think they plan to pop my wormhole.  I fly to it and look for probes... but there are no probes.  Strange.  Have they had time to scan it already?  After a while of sitting and no probes, I warp back to check on the enemy.

No change.  I think I'll scan.  I rapidly resolve the two sigs, which are both near the enemy planet.  I assume they will see this, which may dissuade them from trying to pop my wormhole.  Two statics bookmarked, I hide my probes again.  Then I set to finding their towers.  They are at moons 2 and 3.  I warp to these moons from the C3 static, which is above the planet in absolute space-directions.  (Always warp into potential traps from the most unexpected possible direction.)  The decloak traps turn out not to be.  Each tower just has an anchored bubble.  I don't hit it at either moon.  Neither bubble seems very helpfully placed.  Whatever.

Now I can see that the Scorpions are empty.  There is also one empty Retriever, and an empty Iteron V.  There's a manned covert ops, though, so I take another trip back to my wormhole to see if they are scanning.

They are not.  Weird.

When I warp back to the one of the towers, I can see a new Tengu on scan.  Also, there are two Iteron Vs on scan, not one.  Neither are at this tower.  So I warp to the other tower.  There's one Itty V here.

Where is the other?  I point my scan at the ore anom... yes, there it is.  It seems they want their jetcans back.  I once again warp to the site at 10km

A Miasmos is better for this.

Again I land about 40km from the jetcans.  The Iteron is next to the cans, no surprise there.  I head towards it.  This time there is no hurry.  The Iteron picks up one can completely.  There are six more cans near it, and a bit further away another three jetcans.  My guess is they are full, and an Iteron maxxes out at less than two jetcans worth of stuff.  So, it will have to take multiple trips.

The Iteron turns, and warps to the Russian planet.  I continue getting in range of the cans he was at.  I figure he'll be back.  Meanwhile, I determine the range to the planet -- 3.2 AU.  I set my dscan to 3 AU, so that I can see if anything is coming.

I am mindful that this may be a trap.  But there's only one way to find that out, and I feel the risk is worth it here.  Their listless response to my presence so far does not suggest they have much of a plan.

Just as I get into position about 8 km "up" from the jetcans, I see a Tengu on scan.  Ah.  It is a trap!  But I am aware of it.  I see the Tengu landing on grid.  It lands about 40km from me -- it must be back at the warp in.  It disappears.  It evidently has a cloak.  So they are trying to bait me, or just to fly cover.  But they screwed up.  The Tengu is not close enough to scramble or even disrupt me.  Nor can it lock me fast enough.   I am going for it when the Itty gets back.

And there it comes, gliding on grid.  170km, then 40, and 10.   It has returned to the same cans, and I am poised 7km off.  Normally an easy kill, but with the Tengu this may become interesting.

I uncloak, and start locking the Iteron.  And... it's locked.  I see the Tengu uncloak.  The Iteron is dying, and boom.  Gone.  I am still not locked, so I try to lock the pod.  I almost get it... and I see the redbox appear.  Ok, I am warping.  (The pod escapes.)  I wonder if a volley of the Tengu's heavy missiles can kill me.  I doubt it, especially after the recent hitpoint buff.  The question is not tested.  The missiles never hit.  I warp.

I bounce and immediately return to the site, but it's quiet.  They may or may not try for the rest of their cans soon, but I am not going to take another shot at it.  They may well succeed at trapping me.

I set off down into C3.  I find some nice nullsec-style data/relic sites.  I pass back through to get my hacking Buzzard.  The Russians are not in evidence.  So I visit the wreck and get the single cargohold expander off it.  Phat lewt!  I get my Buzzard then I score some actual nice loot in C3, and return.

This time I see the Russian Scorpions manned.  They are popping my wormhole, finally.  I skedaddle back in, and watch as they finish the job.  Bye, guys.